We realize that some of the most interesting sessions are the ones that happen spontaneously. Often during the break or in the coffee corner. We also want to make sure we have enough technical sessions, but good developers are not always session builders.

That's why we foresee a specific timeslot for an open space format focussed on technical topics.

Unconference Mechanics

1.1/ volunteers line up to present what they want to share/learn about techniques, frameworks, designs, …

1.2/ add topic to the market place (time/location matrix)

2/ refine the program

Four principles apply to how you navigate in open space:

1/ Whoever comes is the right people

2/ Whatever happens is the only thing that could've

3/ When it starts is the right time

4/ When it's over, it's over

all founded on the 'law of two feet'

If you feel that you are not contributing or benefiting from a presentation, please move on to something else.

An Integral view on Agile

A “yes, and…” approach

“Collaborate. Deliver. Reflect. Improve.” says most of what you need to say and do. Simple to understand, yet difficult to master. The agile landscape encompasses many different practices and frameworks. Leaving away all decorations and getting to the essence, we need a way to navigate change and improvements in complex adaptive systems. We will explore a simple model which gives a framework that allows one to understand the whole system, while looking at the whole through different windows. In this session we will elaborate questions to analyse a system. We will experiment and apply it to a case.

Goal of the session:

– Provide a more complete map of Agile reality- Help you become a more well-rounded coach- Help you become more effective in your Agile transitions

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

Integral: holistic, complete, whole, all-inclusive, global

We are facing a flurry of contradicting ideas and differing perspectives each day like never before. And there is no sign of things slowing down anytime soon. This is true for the world at large, but especially for people working in Agile environments at the cusp of technological advancement.

As the world, our culture, our technology, and our minds evolve, so must our tools for addressing the growing complexity. We use theories as lenses in order to reduce said complexity and make it more manageable. And since there is a staggeringly large amount of tools and theories which help us on our way as coaches and members of Agile teams, one cannot help but wonder how they all fit together.

Using the Integral Agile framework, we can take a step back and not simply look at one true way to solve all problems. Rather, we will be focusing on a meta view of things. We will widen the lens we use to look at the world to include several theories and see how they fit together.

The Integral model / approach / framework makes clear that every event or situation may be understood within the context of interior and exterior dimensions in both the individual and collective dimensions. By looking through the different lenses we are able to assess, understand, and sense what’s happening in a more complete way.

We will help you widen your lens, make you curious to learn from other disciplines, and increase your awareness of your own bias (of course, you don’t have one, but hear us out first). Hopefully, by learning more about the Integral Agile framework, you will be able to handle more complexity and make more sense of the Agile world around you. We will address pathologies you probably weren’t even aware of and show ways towards a healthier and more balanced Agile ecosystem.

Together with the participants, we’re going deep and wide in this interactive session.

We are going to give an overview of the Integral Agile framework and give you the chance to check for your own preference or bias. We will form expert groups for each field, give groups the chance to learn from each other, and finally provide the opportunity to connect so that you can get help on your learning journey after the session has ended.

Our hope is that this is going to help you become a more well-rounded Agile Coach or practitioner. We want to help you make your Agile transitions more successful.

Game on your assumptions

Games that can help to challenge existing assumptions

Serious games are a safe place to challenge your typical behaviors, expectations and assumptions. During this workshop we'll explore couple of serious gaming tools and then we'll go further to have a deeper look at your specific challenges and to find a way how you can approach them in your real-life situation.

Games will work as a mirror helping you to realize where you have assumptions. The dynamics of games trigger you to ask questions and challenge your patterns. In the first round my games will challenge some generic assumptions and in the second round you will create games that help you to approach your individual assumption-reality conflict.

(For the Review process)

Example of what can happen at the workshop

Part 1. We'll use Fearful Journey cards. Attendees are split into several groups. We play several rounds

– groups are given a problem "There is a team where retrospectives don't help". Groups are invited to play "Fact or assumption game". In turn group-members take the cards from the deck and say if the content of this card is a "fact" about the retro or an "assumption".

– groups are given another problem "Q&A sessions were cancelled". Groups are invited to play "If -then" game. Working in pairs attendees draw two random cards and try to make a chain like the following "if this is an assumption, then this is the fact / how we can break this assumption".

Couple of other games with the same tool will be played.

Part 2. Groups share their individual challenges and choose the most interesting one. Then per group attendees try to hack the "Fearless journey" game to find the ways to solve the stated problem.

There is no entry barrier to participate in this workshop. As we work in groups we can create groups per level – more experienced facilitators will play together and starter will create their own group to which I can help more.

After each round we organize a feedback sharing round which helps to spread knowledge among people.

Goal of the session:

How to challenge your existing assumptions through game-like exercises

Intended audience:

Marieke, Leo, Bram, Philippe, Joke, Hank, Ellen

Expected experience:

beginner

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

Serious games are a safe place to challenge your typical behaviors, expectations and assumptions. During this workshop we'll explore couple of serious gaming tools and then we'll go further to have a deeper look at your specific challenges and to find a way how you can approach them in your real-life situation.

Remember – the purpose of this workshop is not to give you solutions but to think together about the ways of approaching them.

Depending on the level of experience of participants we can use Dixit cards, story cubes, moving motivators, Delegation poker, Cards for or against Agility or Fearless Journey deck.

Culture follows structure… and then disaster strikes

How company values and even espoused company values still don't help in self-steered decision making.

So everything is going well in your team or organisation. You have your espoused values on the wall, you have examples how people enact these values and the overall company culture is positive! But the disaster strikes, and everything just crumbled. People didn't seem to listen anymore, or take very strange decisions. How did this happen? And what can you do to prevent it?

Goal of the session:

See the benefits of organisational or team values, but also recognize the limitations, and discover how to add on them with guiding principles.

Intended audience:

teamleads, managers, coaches, scrummasters, team members

Expected experience:

0

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

It’s hip to have your company values posted all over. It’s also recommended that, in order to help your employees and your customers understand what you mean with a value like trust, to create something like a story book: experiences by customers and employees explaining how these values were enacted in reality. These culture books and values are supposed to create the structure needed to build a positive culture within your company. And in a number of companies this combination of strong values and culture books has worked wonderfully well (Zappos,…). The espoused values are shown to become enacted values. But what happens when disaster strikes?

Put your product backlog on steroids

Enrich you product backlog with multiple views

Join us in a session to put your product backlog on steroids by enriching it with multiple views. We will guide you through an exercise to identify, design and use multiple views on a product backlog. Each view represents the backlog in a way that facilitates the conversation and matches the vocabulary a particular stakeholder is familiar with. Together with the other participants, you can discover which product backlog views can help you to communicate more effectively to your stakeholders.

Intended audience:

Joke, Bram, Hank, Ellen

Expected experience:

Understanding what a product backlog is

Session Type:

75 min discovery session

You probably know that the backlog is paramount in making transparent all work to be done on the product to the various stakeholders. Product owners typically use a single backlog representation, i.e. the backlog is a list of items, ordered according to their priority.

In the software architecture community, it has long been recognized that when communicating to different stakeholders, people should use not one, but several representations, each adapted to the viewpoint of a particular stakeholder and his/her concerns w.r.t. the product. This practice hugely facilitates communication to stakeholders and improves their understanding and involvement. In fact, the use of multiple (architectural) views is even standardized as ISO/IEC 42010.

So join us in a session to transfer this idea to put the product backlog on steroids. We will guide you through an exercise to identify, design and use multiple views on a product backlog. Each view represents the backlog in a way that facilitates the conversation and matches the vocabulary a particular stakeholder is familiar with. Together with the other participants, you can discover which product backlog views can help you to communicate more effectively to your stakeholders.

Game: What's your team's next step?

A fun game for determining the agile practice you need now

The search for the next improvement in your team can be difficult. Your company has many goals and even more agile practices seem important. This game is a fun way to explore which agile practices can help you in the current situation to improve.

Goal of the session:

Learn with a board game how to help a team select their next improvement in their current situation, solving the most blocking problem.

Intended audience:

Marieke, Leo, Bram, Philippe, Georges, Vincent, Joke, Ellen

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

Often, doing agile is not black-and-white. Some practices are used, others are decided to not fit the company. Experiments with new practices are done, and adopted when successful. Sometimes, the search for the next improvement can be difficult because the company has many goals and many agile practices seem important. This game is a fun way to explore how agile practices can help you in the current situation to improve. You identify the most important goals and the context of your problem. With these goals and context in mind, agile practices and tools are assessed; do we do them already? Do we need them to reach our goals? Do they fit our context?

The game has 3 steps to play:

1: One person is the problem owner and tells the group his biggest problem at the moment (no discussion). Shuffle the "goal cards" and hand them out to the participants. Each participant calls out a goal of the team and suggest to get rid of it or to keep. Only 3 "goal cards" may be kept in the team. Prioritise them and put the 3 cards where you agreed on, on the board.

2: Shuffle the "context cards" and hand them out to the participants. One team member calls out the context card. All the others check their card for the opposite context. Decide which of the two fits best to the team. But only 5 context cards may be kept.

3: Every team member receives 5 "practice cards". Start one by one. Pick a card out of your hand and place in on the board at either "existing practice", "new practice" or "discard".

At the end, the group has created a complete board with goals to achieve, the context of the problem en the direct actions that could help: the selected practices.

In this game we use practices from: Scrum, Kanban, XP, DevOps and Lean Startup

This game (in English) is newly developed. We have played it once as a part of an agile training where the reactions were enthusiastic. We are thinking about adding a fourth round with "tools" that assist with the chosen practices. We seek the opportunity to play this game with some experienced agilists to tune the game and get feedback on improving it. Should we add or drop goals, context cards or practices? Should we add a level, like tools?

We will have 4 board games with us, so 4 boards x 6 people = 24 people can play.

Practicing Non Violent Communication

Sharpen your saw

Practice Non Violent Communication based on real world team scenarios.

Goal of the session:

Become more effective in communicating

Intended audience:

Ellen, Marieke, Bram

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

In this interactive session you will practice Marshall Rosenberg's Non Violent Communication (NVC) based on real world team scenario's. You'll find out that the 'default' ways that we use to express ourselves are often counterproductive. And you'll learn what to do instead.

This session is intended for development team members, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Agile Coaches, husbands, wives, parents, and other human beings.

The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter

How to collectively navigate your organization through complexity

Join this session to learn about navigating your team or organisation through complex situations. You will get insights in the field of management and leadership. We'll practice a method to tap into the collective wisdom essential in Agile and the future of work.

Goal of the session:

* understand the difference between leadership and management and when we need it.* learn the principles and fundamentals of Art of Hosting – how does it relate to Agile and Sociocracy 3.0* experience a method of participatory leadership – to use the collective wisdom to bring newness and innovation in their work.

Intended audience:

Everyone who is interested in working with groups.

Expected experience:

No previous experience needed

Session Type:

150 min discovery session

What are all the things you think about and take care of when you invite people for a little party? Lots of decisions and many invisible actions are happening beforehand. In the English language there is a nice word that captures this all: hosting. But you cannot only host parties, also conversations and collective learning processes benefit from good hosting. And it is not the same as 'facilitating the meeting'. Can you image you would facilitate a dinner with friends or family? Hosting is different, it goes deeper and is beyond facilitation.

The term Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations That Matter contains many elements: the convening, inviting, holding and guiding the conversations. This hosting practice and methodology is also known as the art of participatory leadership.

In participatory leadership we want, just as in a succesful party, that everyone can join in, feels safe and OK.

Art of Hosting is crucial in the future of work, in a world where we no longer separate thinking from doing, in a world where everyone's voice matters. Whether it is in your community, an Agile transformation or teams doing BAU.

When we talk about Agile, we aim for more collaboration, we say that individuals and interactions are important. But how do we do this on a larger scale?

As a host, you learn:

– to take care that everyone is really listening to each other

– to take care that a dialogue can happen from where novel ideas and solutions sprout, so that every participant feels enriched

– how to learn together, as a collective; be it an organisation, a neighborhood, a school or a company

In this session you will be introduced to what participatory leadership entails:

Practical skill in programming, knowledge of basic software design principles such as SOLID

Session Type:

150 min hands on coding/design/architecture session

The vast majority of software teams in the world are supporting existing code, and not writing fresh code. People who are new to test-driven development (TDD) often claim the practice is not relevant to their work because they are not writing greenfield code. It's difficult for them to see how to apply TDD to existing code that was designed monolithically. They also complain that they lack time to refactor the code, as their stakeholders pressure them to deliver results quickly.

This is a hands-on session in which you will practice specific techniques to refactor existing Java code to break dependencies and simplify the design so that it's possible to write unit test cases, and then go forward with modifications in a test-driven fashion.

The hands-on work will use a randori format so that everyone can follow what is happening in a single thread of refacrotings. Participants will pair at the front of the room.

In each round:

One partner will switch out after a time-box of 5 to 8 minutes, depending on how many people are participating.

The pair will identify and discuss code smells and agree on which refactorings to use to address the problems. The rest of the group is free to make observations and suggestions.

After the coding time-box, the group will retrospect on the changes that were made. This is facilitated by the presenter to ensure key learnings are captured.

The amount of progress the group makes will depend on how many rounds can be completed in the allotted time and how much discussion is necessary to ensure everyone receives useful and practical information.

Scaling from the trenches

Let's assume you get a call from the CEO of BigEnterprises Inc.: Are you available to give a presentation to the board on how to help them transform the entire company into an agile organization? Two days from now… As soon as you have mumbled 'yes' and hung up the phone a mild form of panic arises: The entire company? Not just IT, but also marketing, sales, customer service, etc.? From strategy to execution?

This session gets passed the flame wars on and between scaling frameworks and discusses real life experiences, taken from several large scale agile adoptions in areas like IT, Systems Engineering, sales, and customer service. And yes, some of them combined all of these areas together.

Together we will discover the big questions, common pitfalls, and succes criteria and help you feel more at ease should that phone call really come one day….

Goal of the session:

A better understanding of the use of scaling frameworks in practice; beyond IT; beyond merely many teams

Intended audience:

Marieke, Leo, Bram, Georges, Vincent, Joke, Henk, Ellen

Expected experience:

basic knowledge of scaling frameworks, and an open mind

Session Type:

75 min discovery session

Agile adoption has come a long way. But still many bottom-up agile adoptions hit a glass ceiling at some point because of lack of senior management commitment; lack of organizational and cultural change; lack of…, you name it. You still have the feeling agile works, but somehow you get stuck achieving real organizational benefits like shorter time-to-market; faster response rates, etc. You know, the reasons organizations claim to start doing agile in the first place…

Then the concept of scaling came along, to achieve a broader adoption of agile within the organization. And with it a huge discussion in the agile community that is still commencing. Some claim you don't need anything but Scrum to scale, some will tell you it is not that simple. Scaling frameworks arised, some of which are embraced, and others are mocked as not being agile at all.

But proof of the pudding is in the eating as we know. Like Henri Kniberg said: no tool is evil, it depends on the way you use them. So let's investigate the practicalities of scaling. But with 'scaling' we don't mean just a couple more teams that have to work together. We also mean scaling beyond the area of IT, and connect business strategy to team execution.

We will not describe scaling frameworks in any detail. We will focus on practical experiences.

————————————

So the dust has settled a little after that phone call from the CEO of BigEnterprises INC. But how to commence? Just two days left. Our toolbox is:

the combination of scaling frameworks out there. No time anymore for flaming wars between them. We use what we can.

First we will invite you to come up with a list of questions, challenges, and topics you think are relevant using group brainstorming. We will guide you in clustering them in themes we have discovered that are important in scaling.

In an interactive format, together, we cover the themes, combining patterns; pitfalls; and examples from our experience with your thoughts. We will provoke you to think beyond common patterns, like "How much faster do you think the company will really respond to changes if we merely optimize software development?"; "Do you really want to share the all to common agilists message 'we don't need managers'…to the management?"

The format is that anytime someone identifies a takeaway / key learning from the discussion, he or she writes it on a sticky note and hangs it on the wall. So our list of takeaways will grow during the session. So don't stay glued to your chair, but walk around, stand up, write things down, hang sticky's on the wall.

Together we will mold the findings, we gathered during the session, into a shared set of useful practices at the end.

There is only one thing you need to scale: ENGAGEMENT

How to facilitate an agile transformation with Open Space Agility

Open Space Agility implements Agility in an Agile way, using Pull, not PUSH, using Invitation, not force, and works in increments, not one big push.

It starts and ends with using Open Space technology. In between the organization experiments and learns from methods and practices that align with the agile manifesto. The two main outcomes of Open Space Agility are high employee engagement and continuous organizational learning.

Based on the preferences of the attendees we'll talk about and experience some of the important elements in OSA like invitation, experiments, human needs, Open Space Technology, storytelling, games, authorization, passage rites or the role of the coach.

Goal of the session:

An understanding of why PULL also works best for the agile transformation itself

Intended audience:

Leo, Bram, Vincent, Ellen,

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

Most of us work in an industry in which we need the creativity and problem solving ingenuity that currently resides in the resource we call “people”. My current belief is that the most important thing to scale is engagement. There is no such thing as a successful change program without high levels of human engagement.

Open Space Agility (OSA) starts and ends with using Open Space technology (used as transformation tool, not just a meeting technique http://openspaceworld.org/wp2/). In between the organization experiments and learns from methods and practices that align with the agile manifesto. Not just employees experiment with agile practices, also formally authorized leadership experiments with them. Experimentation reduces anxiety because nothing is set in stone, it explores what works and what doesn’t for the people involved.

The two main outcomes of Open Space Agility are high employee engagement and continuous organizational learning.

Open Space sessions frame an organization wide iteration and retrospection of the agile transformation. Each Open Space creates proceedings (the outcomes of the sessions) that are acted upon by the leadership team. There is clear feedback to the organization which advice will be implemented but also what can’t be done yet.

It implements Agility in an Agile way, using Pull, not PUSH, using Invitation, not force, and works in increments, not one big push. The increments provide the feeling of progress for your transformation.

Based on the preferences of the attendees we'll talk about and experience some of the important elements in OSA like invitation, experiments, human needs, Open Space Technology, storytelling, games, authorization, passage rites or the role of the coach.

Presenters

Olivier Costa

is a member of Ken Gyu dojo where he learns Aikido from Frank sensei and his teacher Tomita Shihan a Japanese grand-master and student of the founder of Aikido: Morihei Ueshiba.

www.WareNatuur.be

He has always been involved in the whole software development cycle. From (business) idea over development & testing until release, follow up (business satisfaction) and maintenance. While writing code primarily in C#, he became an Agile Coach (for very diverse teams writing in very diverse languages) in search of teams he wants to work in.

Johannes Schartau

Stanislava Potupchik

Do you think it's a long way from being a counselor in a kids camp to become a scrum master for development teams? I made this journey and I am happy with where I am now.

I work as a Scrum master at Quby (in Amsterdam), I provide serious games soft skills workshops and trainings as meetups and as events for companies, I speak at the conferences (oh no, that's not true, I make people speak and play and interact while I am called a speaker).

My passion is to help people move so that they can make the world go round. I can listen and give feedback, asking questions that inspire people to challenge themselves more. Know yourself before you start changing, that's my motto. So I strive for ultimate personal and corporate transparency and I invite you to work on that together.

Jeroen van den Brink

Annelies De Meyere

Annelies tumbled into Agile by proxy through her husband and the interesting network she encountered, and started mixing these newly discovered skills in her day-to-day work as Service Manager in a high security environment. Feeling the need for better communication across teams and levels within organisations, Annelies made the switch to become an Agile change facilitator via Co-Learning. Helping companies adapt towards a more flexible way of working, guiding teams towards better results and facilitating change. She makes it her business to make sure the people going through a change get the tools they need to cover the distance. She is a brainstorm facilitator, trainer and coach for teams and individuals, with a lot of techniques in her portfolio. She's a Management 3.0 practitioner and facilitator, Certified LeSS Practitioner, Certified Black Belt Innovation Games Architect, Certified Collaboration Instructor and Certified Facilitator of the LEGO(r) SERIOUS PLAY(r) method.

Erik Talboom

Hi, I am Erik and I am a human being. This immediately defines my biggest passion in life: humans and what it means to be human. I love challenging people's current situation, their professional and/or personal status quo. Co-Learning how we can all improve our way of collaborating and working, while having fun at the same time. That is my second passion in life: playing. I play board games, roleplaying games and computer games and I am continuously looking for ways to use these concepts in my professional life as well. Because play does not mean silly, it means fun and motivating.

My professional life is centered around my passion for people and play. I mostly work as coach, both agile and lean as well as technical coach for software craftsmanship and personal coach for deeper psychological understanding. Next to that I try to be the game master as much as possible while facilitating meetings, stimulating collaboration and helping to channel creative energy.

Alexander Helleboogh

After my engineering studies, I obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science for research in the field of self-organizing systems. Due to their interactive nature, self-organizing systems are a lot more adaptive to changing environments. I worked several years as a freelance software architect.

So why did I end up in Agile coaching?

Nowadays changing environments push human organizations into becoming more adaptive too. And similar to self-organizing systems, Agile approaches rely heavily on interaction and self-organization as patterns to improve adaptability.

This analogy explains my passion for agile. I've been involved in several large-scale agile transformations where I strive to increase self-organization by fostering openness and interaction among people. This leads to organizations becoming more adaptive. And to interacting people having more fun too.

Nelis Boucké

Nelis is a consult with a passion for building software systems and for practices that improve software quality. Most of what he does starts form the observation that the main challenges for great software are typically not in technology, but in fostering collaboration between people. This means that learning and sharing is key to success, both technically as in working with people.

Sandra Warmolts

Sandra Warmolts is an Agile coach, scrum master, product owner and trainer in Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, Less and SAFe product development and agile projects, with 15 years of experience.The combination of software development and teamwork make her job the best in the world.

She's mother of a 14 year old girl and 13 year old boy, lives with her husband and kids in Meeden (Groningen), loves to play tennis and go to conferences.

Jan Salvador van der Ven

Jan works as a trainer and coach for teams developing software. With a software engineering education, he has a thorough understanding of the whole development process of software. Next to his businesses, he also teaches at the university of Groningen on software startups and works on his PhD on software architecture. He is cofounder of Groningen Programmeert, a non-profit organisation that helps primary schools to teach programming.

In his free time he likes to run, hike, 3d-print, drink a beer or play with his two daughters.

Marco Mulder

More than fifteen years ago, I was lucky to be part of a successful large-scale Agile product development company: OTI. It was an IBM subsidiary where we developed Eclipse, by now a well-known software development environment. After that great experience with Agile, I became one of the frontrunners of Scrum in The Netherlands. I regularly co-trained with Scrum founder Jeff Sutherland and co-founded the Dutch Scrum community nlscrum.

For over ten years, as a Scrum coach and trainer I've had a positive impact on countless organizations: small start-ups, large companies, governmental organisations and even schools Besides my training and coaching experience, I have many years of hands-on experience as software developer and as Scrum Master.

Bas van der Hoek

I have been involved in software development for over 25 years, and in many different capacities: support, sales, marketing, education, architecture, and management. Whatever I did, I always enjoyed it very much and brought a lot of enthusiasm and energy. Over the years the lines of code I write has seen a decline, but I still get apps in the App Store 🙂

These days I spend most of my time training and coaching large and small organizations in becoming more agile and deriving more value from the work they do.

Johan Decoster

Johan is an Agile coach and trainer and a practitioner of participatory leadership. He wants to make a difference in the lives of the people he works with by uncovering everyone's unique potential and using the collective wisdom to navigate complex situations.

Besides working closely with teams, he has a strong interest in different meditation practices and Nature.

Jef Cumps

Jef Cumps is a very experienced coach and trainer supporting multiple large organisations in their transition towards more agility. He is and has been leading enterprise changes covering all levels (individual, teams, management, organization).

As a trainer, Jef has gained a lot of experience in training various topics: Scrum, Lean, Agile, Kanban, S3, 'Teal', visual facilitation, communication, people management and coaching skills. Next to his knowledge and experience, his major asset is his coaching attitude getting the most out of people and organizations.

Jef is Certified Kanban Practitioner, Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum coach. Jef presented several sessions on XP Days and other conferences in the past.

Dave Nicolette

An IT professional since 1977, Dave discovered Agile in 2002 and found it solved or alleviated many of the problems inherent in traditional IT. Since then, he has been a dedicated practitioner and ardent proponent of change toward Agile and Lean thinking and practices. In recent years, he has worked primarily as an organizational change agent and team coach, drawing inspirtation from Systems Thinking, Lean Thinking, and other schools of thought. He enjoys sharing experiences and effective practices with fellow IT professionals and participates actively in the agile, lean, and software craftsmanship communities.

Per Beining

Per is part of the team behind one of Denmarks leading company within the field of Agilily: Ugilic (www.ugilic.dk).

Per's key skills are Agile project leadership and mentoring in IT environments. Working together with developers, business sponsors and management, he helps organizations implement Agile while considering existing culture, processes and governance (including PMO), and the organization's Agile maturity.

Educating and training people and organisations in how to apply Agile and Scrum is also close to his heart. And how to create and work with requirements is one of his current main focus areas.

Per is a DSDM Certified APL Practitioner and Certified Scrum Master and Product Owner. He has many years experience using traditional approaches to project management and systems development, and is a Certified Prince2 Practitioner, Certified IPMA Level C project leader, and Certified ITIL Foundation Level practitioner.

Per started his career as a software developer (perl, java and HTML). He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Copenhagen Business School, and has solid experience in telecommunications, media, transportation & logistics, finance/banking, and the military.

Sjoerd Kessels

Sjoerd Kessels is a senior Agile Coach and trainer focused on coaching both teams, management and organizations in agility. He helps teams to adopt agile development and become more effective as a team. At the same time he helps organisations in (Scaled) Agile transitions.

At an corporate level he helps organizations in agile transitions by consulting and coaching stakeholders at technical, business, and management positions,

– how to scale agile,

– how to organize processes around the flow of business value,

– how to align the (new) agile process with the company structure and culture.

Gregor Heidinger

Gregor Heidinger is an Agile Coach and trainer with more than 11 year of experience. He made the switch from software entrepreneur to Agile Coach in 2006. Gregor helps large organization in adopting a Agile way of working.

Markus Wissekal

Astrid Claessen

I have always looked around me and saw things that could be improved upon. That is why continuous improvement resonates with me so strongly. With experience in almost every role available in software development I'm able to understand the challenges teams face when dancing with uncertainty. Using that understanding I can help them overcome obstacles on their way.

Experience working abroad in: India, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Hong Kong and China. This helps me understand more of the cultural aspect, which is a big part of any Agile transformation.

Participants

Jan

Jan has been working as a programmer for 5 years now. Jan loves to program. He knows a lot of languages, and a lot of tools. At work, he he is not always happy because the circumstances often force him to deliver the quality he knows he can reach. Jan explores new technologies and trends on the internet and in books and magazines. At night Jan contributes to an open source project together with 10 other guys, from all over the world. That's where he heard about agile methodologies. In the open source group, he is used to work with unit tests, but he hopes to get some real in-depth tips and tricks from experts at the XP Days conference. He is also interested to learn about the latest trends for continuous intergration tools and test automation.

Marieke is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis. Several months ago, her team had an introductory training on extreme programming and scrum. Some of the ideas she learned about seemed interesting enough, but she is not sure if this methodology is applicable in their particular situation. After the course, some of her colleagues started to write unit tests, but there still are only a few, and they are not run very often, as far as Marieke can see. They also started to do a daily standup meeting, because according to the trainers that is a tool to enhance communication within the team. But these meetings are rather boring, and they tend to take 1/2 hour, every day. Team members are grumbling about wasting their time.

Marieke started to think all this agile stuff is only an unusable hype. But then she heard about XP Days, and she thought "well, let's give it another chance, if 150 people go to this conference, for 11 years in a row now, maybe there is more to it". She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have applied these techniques, which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. Over the years, Leo has been working as a developer, as a project lead, as a tester, as an analyst, as a manager, and as a consultant. He knows from experience that everything comes back, if you only wait a few years. He has learned that the same problems and the same solutions have been invented and re-invented a hundred times in computer science. He has lived through the rise and fall of uncountable new technologies and methodogies. All of them brand new, all of them the one and only forever best way to make software. Leo wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic people.

Bram has never missed an XP Days. He has been to several other conferences in Europe, and also attended quite a few bigger agile and other conferences. Bram likes the XP Days, because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He has never heard about this agile stuff. He doesn't know what it is, or what it can be used for. He guesses it is something his boss wants to buy. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.

mmm I think maybe it is not very useful for Philippe to come to the XP Days? -Vera

Why not? Let Philippe come, let him relax and have a beer and dinner with agile people. He might even attend some presentations. And, once he's relaxed, who knows what could happen? –Pascal

Georges is a project manager. His life is filled with stress, deadlines, difficult programmers, unhappy customers and demanding bosses. Sometimes he wonders if he's chosen the right career.

Lately, Georges has been hearing more and more about agile methods. Some of his ex-colleagues have converted from project management to agile coaching. They tell him tales of vibrant, exciting, fun projects where customers and developers live in perfect harmony. That can't be true. They must be exaggerating. Or are they….?

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. His teams don't do too badly. Some projects are allright; some don't fully satisfy their users. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10% in the next two years. So, Vincent looks around for solutions that might help him to create and implement the plan. He has looked at a lot of things: processes, tools, consultants… He's heard that some other companies (even some reputable companies) have had success with "agile" methods, so he comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him. He doesn't know what to expect. Hippy surfer dudes? 18 year old wizz kids with piercings? Greybearded hackers? Oh well… What does he have to lose?

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke understands her customers needs, she has lots of ideas for new features that would enhance the product. She knows that this product really enhances its user's lives. That's one of the reasons her company is so succesful. But they have trouble keeping up with customer demand. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. If only she and the development team could work together more efficiently, they could make this product make more of a difference. Maybe this "agile" stuff can help? How does product management work in agile projects? Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. Appalled and bemused by the shocking waste of time, money, and people, he does his best to bring the joy back in the life of those around him by introducing agile methodologies wherever he sees the opportunity. Hank comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.

Ellen is an agile coach. She's been using agile methods for a few years now. XP, SCRUM, Lean… it doesn't matter much to her. She's more interested in doing things that matter to deliver value for her customers. She wants to work with a happy team, doing meaningful work.

Ellen wants to learn new ideas and share experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.